Sky-Fall review

By Chris Smith and Colin Fisher-McAllum

The latest game from the Reservoir Gods

Sky-Fall is a Falcon specific game requiring 4Mb of ram and just about
any monitor - RGB, VGA or TV. Control is via the keyboard, joystick or
Jag joypad. Up to 4 people can play individually or in a head to head
competitive game.

It's a rather small program, only 400k, that includes a 30k text file
which explains most of the game. Run the program and you see a short,
but sweet introduction, 3 screens telling you what the game is and who
wrote it. With the introduction the music starts, at first the music
sounds a bit weird, but as the drums and other instruments are added,
it gets better. That is until you've been listening to it for about 20
minutes, it then becomes irritating while trying to concentrate on a
game, but a press of F2 and all is quiet again.

The tiles drop in groups of three and in time honoured manner, your
job is to try to arrange them in lines of three or more matching
tiles. These are removed from the gameplay area and the remaining
tiles drop to fill the gaps. The normal side to side movement and
vertical exchange of the falling tiles is supplemented with 45%
rotation. There is more than a touch of Tetris as well as Columns to
Sky-Fall. As you would expect the play gets faster and harder as the
game progresses. When the tiles reach the sky it's... Game Over... or
is it? Well for the normal game it is, but there is more than one
game!

How about playing the opposite of the normal game? In Build-Up you
must try not to make matches and fill up the board. Points are
deducted for all unfilled spaces in the board. I personally liked this
twist of the conventional.

The third game is, Removal. It's similar to normal except part of the
board is already filled before the game starts. Some matches may
already be waiting in the pre-prepared board but they will not be
triggered until you have made your own first match.

Each of the three games can be played in one of 4 board sizes. You can
even choose how you want the tiles to fall. Normal, the speed never
increases - Incremental, the speed increases with each level - Off,
easy-peasy wimps version... the tiles pause in the sky and only move
when you pull them! Level end can be set to a time limit, a given
number of tiles, reaching a given score or none - you stay in the same
level for ever. Another level end setting can be selected but requires
a little explanation. Race- This is a race against the clock! A given
number of tiles have to be placed in a given time limit. You are
working against the clock. If all the tiles are placed within the time
limit you move on to the next level, otherwise you die!

Add to this the selection of Easy, Medium or Hard play levels and you
can see this is a very configurable game. In the multiplayer mode you
can even select to have all players having the same tiles, this gives
no single player the advantage of luck.

Finally, there are Ghosts. These are special tiles that effect the
gameplay. When triggered in single player mode the ghosts will have
detrimental effect on your game, so you have to work to avoid matching
them. However, in multiplayer mode the disaster is cast upon your
opponent. There are a number of Ghost tiles and they all have
different effects. For example the controls can be reversed, the tiles
drop faster or you lose control all together for a while.

A Tetris/Columns clone maybe, but there is so much game play here that
it is a must for all Falcon owners who enjoy an occasionally game. How
much is Sky-Fall, œ20? œ15? œ10? No, it's sharware and registration is
only œ5. Sky-Fall+, a new version especially for registered users is
expected soon. It will include 8 extra ghost effects and some sound
samples. I cannot stress enough that you'd be daft not to register
this game. œ5 is a small portion of it's worth and each registration
encourages The Reservoir Gods to continue their Falcon support.